What is Revolution 2018?

What is Revolution 2018:

With Revolution 2018 soon upon us, I’m finally able to release more information. I wanted to wait until Sakura Fight Festa to announce it, and now that that’s done, I’m free to do so. Here are the games that are in the event:

Arcana Heart 3 Love Max Six Stars

Under-Night In-Birth Exe:Late[st]

King of Fighters XIV 3.0

Soul Calibur VI**

Blazblue Central Fiction

Guilty Gear Xrd Revelator 2

Dragonball FighterZ

Blazblue Cross Tag Battle

Skullgirls 2nd Encore

**Dependent on release.

That line up is more specific than it seems. Overall it focuses on Anime, considering our event has featured the genre since the very first Revolution. This means Guilty Gear, Blazblue, Dragonball, Skullgirls and Under Night In-Birth is a lock.

King of Fighters XIV comes with the support of East London Fighters so we’ll be having that game once again but now with the boost of version 3.0. Previously Revolution has also been supported by SNK so I hope it continues into the future.

After Blazblue Cross Tag Battle controversial announcement for the Evo line up and the issues with the DLC a lot of people have soured on the game. We have decided to support it for several reasons, but most of all because the game is incredibly competent and is exciting to watch from the time we’ve gotten from it and everything at Sakura Fight Festa backed that up.

PQube is putting a lot of support into the event, as they’ve been partners of both NGI and Revolution the event for years. If it wasn’t for them, Revolution would never have been able to get off the ground. They are supporting the game at Revolution with a considerable amount of backing while Supporting both Blazblue Central Fiction and Guilty Gear, and as a tournament that has had Blazblue as a headliner for every year it’s been around, this is the least we can do is support it ourselves for the community. Now that more people have their hands on it, the hype is steadily growing.

Before I get on the touchy subject of Soul Calibur VI, it would be good to talk about the two games that have not been chosen, in order to give the following reasoning context and its place in the bigger picture.

The first is Pokken. Deciding to drop Pokken is a strange, and difficult, choice but it’s not ‘entirely’ left out. The biggest issue facing Pokken is the sheer amount of resources it takes to run. The game requires two consoles and two monitors, one per one set up and, considering that we are downsizing the event this year, we are unsure if we will have the space or resources to be able to provide a good experience. I’ll say this, if we can confirm the guaranteed space and resources to run it, we’ll announce it as our 10th and final game – but only if those conditions are met. We’ll be keeping an eye out and monitoring the situation closely on how much space and kit we are working with. So unless someone wants to inject us with a hideous amount of money to get somewhere bigger and more kit, we will have to remain realistic. The games already in the line up are lot easier to cater for (which explains Gundam Versus and Dissidia is missing from this line up).

As for Tekken, it’s a bit of a different story with lots of things, related to last year’s Revolution, that has left us a little insecure about the event. The first thing is the various issues we had with the event (I’ll touch upon that later) but the main thing is the horrible timing of the event and for the Tekken players that came to Revolution it was a missed opportunity. Unfortunately a Spanish Master’s event fell on the same weekend, which split the player base making both tournaments smaller than they could have been.

I don’t want, a repeat of the same situation, where Tekken players who could benefit from a TWT event, miss out by coming to ours instead. However we have had calls already asking for the game’s return, so if Soul Calibur VI is not there then we’ll put Tekken in as a requested game.

As for Soul Calibur VI, people may be reading too deeply regarding our announcement. Our released games list is us saying that we intend to run the game if it’s out before Revolution 2018. If not I hope we can persuade Namco in some capacity that it will be there even if it’s not a tournament. As of now, nothing has been discussed, not even with Namco, so there is no hidden announcement and we don’t know any dates or anything. This was us saying we’ll do it if it’s out, if not it’s not the end of the world just replace it with something else. Sign-ups for the game wouldn’t be available unless a date is confirmed and if it was a pre-release build it would a free entry tournament. I didn’t think this would grab much attention but it’s really a no big deal for us on a logistical front.

So what’s the plan for this year?

Well if anything we plan on hosting our event in East London, once the current venue finish their move. We’ll open sign ups on that day when it does and, someone who works at the venue I can already say that the process has already begun and should be finalised relatively soon. Just to make people aware, we are not using the Rocket Complex again, so we are moving venue.

The reason we are more particular on our choice of venue is because we had a lot of issues with the one we chose last year and, without a doubt, will take a hit on the people attending. So we are downsizing a little and making sure we are able to cover problems a lot more effectively. I’m personally expecting smaller numbers this year but we are making plans in case for some reasons people actually decide they want to come on mass.

We also starting from scratch, as far as money is concerned, this year so we couldn’t afford a super big venue. We’ll be building from the ground up again and having something of similar size to last year approximately but just on one floor. Another advantage of the venue change is that we would be in control of both the opening and exiting times of the event, which was a big factor last year.

I’m working on getting Skullgirls on the Saturday, nothing confirmed but it’s something I’m working towards.

This will also see a bigger push for casuals as well since we didn’t have as many as we hoped last year, so there should be at least a few for every game even on their off days. We slipped up on this last year, and hopefully we can get support for consoles and monitors for this year too. Any money from sign-ups will go towards next year plus to boost the amount of monitors available for people to use.

With Astral Heat now being on a Thursday, we’ll be adding that into the schedule by throwing in some really small but fun side games like Windjammers and Fighting EX Layer and be doing a community evening with some other fun side activities.

We’ll also be switching to Smash.GG altogether to make it so much easier for people to sign up and get payments in. After dealing with a ton of issues with Sakura Fight Festa, I personally don’t want to go through that again.

Last notes:

I’d like to give a shout to all of the people who supported us last year. I really do appreciate it, from the companies that support us to the players that attend. If it wasn’t for everyone Revolution really wouldn’t be a thing. So just keep an eye out about information on Revolution and don’t be afraid to ask any questions.

Also for the love of all things, please do not contact me about Arc Revo spots, as far as I know they don’t exist at this current time and I have no information to give you.